• What is a Microsoft Exchange Server?
• But I don't have the expertise to manage a Microsoft Exchange Server
• Our email system is already set up through our ISP? Why is Managed Exchange different?



Microsoft Exchange Server is the industry's leading server for e-mail, calendaring, and messaging. Microsoft Exchange server is designed to meet the messaging and collaboration needs of small and medium-size corporations, and properly deployed can help to dramatically increase employee productivity through improved communication and collaboration. By building a communication and collaboration infrastructure, businesses can manage messaging, clients, calendars, and other personal and team information.

With the majority of business communication being email, it is important to protect this messaging system in a more controlled environment. A Microsoft Exchange Server can help to protect your messaging assets and offers a way to archive communication between employees and clients. Policies are easier to communicate, meetings are easier to schedule, and tasks become easier to delegate when you centralize your communication and collaboration.

Exchange offers the following: Easier Collaboration for Office Users Exchange makes it easy to share information across a workgroup or replicate it across your organisation. Using Exchange, users are able to: exchange e-mail with co-workers, customers, partners, and suppliers co-ordinate daily schedules to easily plan meetings share customer information, correspondence, call reports/meeting notes in public folders delegate and assign tasks to other users through e-mail You have the ability to grant other people, such as assistants or administrators, access to your mailbox on your behalf. You can also manage “rules” for processing messages on Exchange Server, giving you the flexibility to create auto-responses and automatic filing of incoming messages. Facilitates Group Scheduling You can share your calendar with an administrative assistant, who can schedule meetings around your availability. In addition, Outlook and Exchange support direct booking of resources such as conference rooms. Better Customer Service with Built-In Contact Management for Teams Organise all meetings, documents, tasks, and communications with your customers so that all team members have easy (and shared) access to this information from a central location. Improves Team/Project Productivity with Outlook’s Team Folders The team folders in Outlook create a workspace where workgroups, virtual teams, and project teams can share group calendars, tasks, contacts, discussions, documents, and other important information. One is able to set rules so that only team members can gain access to the relevant folders. Streamlines Business Processes Turn paper-based processes into efficient online applications by simply standardising paper forms, putting them online and routing them to people who need to see them. Create applications such as sales proposal reviews, holiday requests, timecards, help-desk requests and expense reporting. Mobile users can save money and time by submitting expense reports while out of the office. Flexibility for Branch Offices or Mobile Employees You can log on from the road with the same functionality as if you were sitting in the office. Exchange Server 2003 supports mobile devices such as Pocket PC and Smartphones and enables you to synchronize your Inbox, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks lists so you can remotely check your appointments and other important information. Mobile device browsers are also supported through Exchange Outlook Mobile Access, which enables HTML, compressed HTML (CHTML), and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browser–based devices to access Exchange Server. The following diagram illustrates the types of clients that Exchange Server supports. You can also work offline with e-mail, contacts, tasks, schedules and applications, such as customer account management, when disconnected from the network. You then synchronise folders and applications when reconnecting with the network. Improves Organisational Knowledge Sharing Within the Digital Dashboard, you can get e-mail, team tasks, business metrics, and industry news, or keep tabs on the competition. File Searching Search Outlook folders and messages to find misplaced e-mail. Search through your company’s public folders to find lost entries. Unified Messaging Integrate e-mail, voice mail, and fax messaging so all your communications are available within Outlook. Have anywhere, anytime access to all your messages. Organise incoming e-mail into folders or flag e-mail from important clients.

Businesses can now have all of the benefits that a Microsoft Exchange Server offers, without actually having to purchase or manage it themselves. That’s was Hosting as a Service is all about. Companies can now subscribe to services such as Managed Exchange which provides them with the functionality of a Microsoft Exchange Server, but it is managed for them off-site. Managed Exchange provides small to medium-sized companies with corporate level email, which includes anti-virus and anti-spam filtering, as well as having all of their data backed up off-site.


Managed Exchange is WebCentral’s premium email service which can be used in place of the POP mailboxes included with your hosting plan (through your ISP). It is a business-grade service that provides anti-virus, anti-spam, back-ups and flexible access options, including support for mobile devices.
Some of the key differences between POP3 email and Managed Exchange are as follows:

Virus and Spam Management: Managed Exchange incorporates comprehensive virus management which scans each email four times against the latest virus databases whether it is in the Inbox, in Sent Items or filed in a storage folder. This helps to ensure that your staff computers better protected against virus-led 'downtime', and can also help save you time and money as we are responsible for the purchasing, installing and managing of the anti-virus software on your behalf. Managed Exchange also includes spam filtering capabilities.

Email Backup: The risk of losing your email records (eg. through PC or laptop corruption) is greater with a POP3 mailbox because emails get downloaded over the internet from a service provider's mail server to your PC or laptop - and copies generally do not remain on the server. Managed Exchange on the other hand stores your email, as well as your valuable contact lists and calendar schedules, on the secure Exchange servers at WebCentral. This means that if you are a Managed Exchange user and your PC or laptop is corrupted, your valuable information should be effectively backed up at WebCentral and can be immediately accessed through any computer with an internet connection and web browser.

Easier and Better Access: Trying to access POP3 mailboxes from multiple locations to send and receive email can be a complex task, which is generally more time-consuming than most busy working people can afford.

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